Morris's poem drops us into a strange, fairy-tale landscape where everything feels both enchanting and unsafe. The opening field has giant mountains and leaves, which suggests a tiny creature's view, as if we're looking up from the ground. Yet love is sought in a "dark fountain" of "rotten banquets and thieves," so the beauty is already spoiled.
The middle section sets two animals against each other. The lioness feeds young minds with sparkling ladybirds, which sounds gentle and nourishing. The hyena is a tyrant who teaches the young to kill with a venomous sting. By the end, "the lioness are fallen," so the harmful teacher seems to have won. The poem may be about what happens when good influences lose out to cruel ones, though the images are open to interpretation.
The final stanza shifts to strawberry mushrooms floating in the sky, with love found in the clouds. It feels peaceful, but also distant, since the speaker looks down on those passing below. The overall mood is dreamy, uneasy, and a little wistful.